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Report - - RAF Upwood, October 2017 | Military Sites | 28DaysLater.co.uk

Report - RAF Upwood, October 2017

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Urban_Tomb_Raider

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
Waaaah, way late to the party on this one, but better late than never. Done with the regular boyoz, a stripped, fire damaged, heavily graffitied shell of its once former glory. No tanks, no windows, lots of kids dying to be pro umbex, and London grime artists using the location for a video shoot. Regardless the site is huge so it looked like a beautiful ghost town with the autumnal surrounding, reminding me of the university part from The last of Us (to those who played the game), and there was plenty of foolery and shenanigans. Some of the buildings are being used by a farmer to keep livestock, I believe the living quarters is a field for pigs and opposite one of the water towers there are two small and rather smelly highland cattle(??)

Hizztory

RAF Upwood was a non-flying station which was under the control of the United States Air Force from 1981, and one of three RAF stations in Cambridgeshire used by the United States Air Forces in Europe.

A few huts and aeroplane sheds were erected, only to be quickly removed when the RAF left the site in 1919. Though the location wasn’t forgotten and it was converted into a permanent RAF station in 1935-36. It was at the time when the building where being put up that the station was renamed Upwood.

During WW1 in September of that year the station opened as Bury. This initial name referred to its location near the village of Bury and the larger market town of Ramsey. Initially there were no permanent flying units assigned to the station. Instead, No. 75 Squadron flying BE.2 aircraft out of Elmswell, Suffolk used the station as a night-landing ground and satellite field.

During WW2, as part of the RAF expansion programme, this airfield was in dire need of revamping, the grass-surfaced and had some 250 acres. A camp of permanent buildings where built in the south-west corner adjacent to the village of Bury. They consisted of the steel and brick flat-roofed buildings that were the hallmark of these expansion period stations. The first flying unit to use the new runways at Upwood was No 139 Squadron flying Mosquitos. The following month No. 156 Squadron joined them from Warboys to give Upwood an operational Lancaster unit and these two squadrons remained in residence for the rest of hostilities. Operational losses from Upwood totalled 66, half being Lancaster’s and half Mosquitos.

It was closed off in 1994 by the Ministry of Defence and and the land and buildings got sold off to civil ownership. The site of the medical wing has been cleared over the period of September/October 2015 to make way for private housing. Recently there are plans to finally demolish the whole site and build new housing, articles dating from March 2017 talking about "later in the year," however, we're two months away from 2018 and I didn't see any signs of demolition activity.

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:^)
 
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